3/25/09

3/23/09

Featured above are two of Finlay's early concrete works. His interest in text as object was later manifested in his life project, Little Sparta a garden that features 'plaques, benches, headstones, obelisks, planters, bridges and tree-column bases' inscribed with language. Finlay and family lived and worked on the farm and garden bringing mythology, philosophy and poetry to the landscape; a synthesis of nature and culture through everyday routine.

3/16/09

"The complex moulding of the plywood child's chair of 1945 was a triumph of modern machine mass production and was hailed as such. However, such was the fear of anything to do with hand crafts or folk work in products which graced the interiors of the brave new world of 'functionalism' and machine aesthetics, that the cut-out heart motif that humanized the object while serving as a hand-hole was attacked as sentimental and 'absurdly romantic' by Arthur Drexler, the influential US design critic."- Humanizing Modernism: The Crafts, 'Functioning Decoration' and the Eameses, Pat Kirkham (1998)

The Eameses emphasized William Lethaby's "good, honest building" through unpretentious use of decoration, truth to material and their joy in hand work and labour.